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Why Children's Books?

lrb.co.uk

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Re: Why Children's Books?

#71

Post by grues-dinner »

philipkglass wrote: post #68
sersi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish the scan was better quality. Extremely hard to read.

This scan is in color and easier to read: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015080382503&se...

HathiTrust scans are often only available in the US. In this case, because it's apparently a reprint from the 40s, it's presumably been assumed to be still in copyright outside the US. This is probably incorrect: it's highly likely there was no additional copyright generated by the facsimile process.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#72

Post by philipkglass »

grues-dinner wrote: post #71
philipkglass wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scan is in color and easier to read: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015080382503&se...

HathiTrust scans are often only available in the US. In this case, because it's apparently a reprint from the 40s, it's presumably been assumed to be still in copyright outside the US. This is probably incorrect: it's highly likely there was no additional copyright generated by the facsimile process.

That's disappointing. I didn't know that HathiTrust had geolocation-based visibility controls. The main reason I started using HathiTrust is because it had much better visibility than Google Books, which is terribly restrictive about allowing full book view for more recent out-of-copyright items.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#73

Post by dang »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #56
dang wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let's not find the most ideologically provocative point in an article and make the thread be about that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

Hey dang have you noticed you have a bit of a nazi problem on your hands recently. Or is that not really a "problem" from YC's perspective these days.

That sounds more like an ideological cross-examination than a genuine question, but the answer is that HN's standards haven't changed in a long time. Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#74

Post by giraffe_lady »

dang wrote: post #73
giraffe_lady wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey dang have you noticed you have a bit of a nazi problem on your hands recently. Or is that not really a "problem" from YC's perspective these days.

That sounds more like an ideological cross-examination than a genuine question, but the answer is that HN's standards haven't changed in a long time. Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links.

Yeah I know the standards have always been accepting of nazi views as long as the commenter is otherwise polite about it. The thing to wonder is if anything external has changed over those years that would affect how nazis behave in tech industry spaces.

Anyway! While I've got you how about removing the rate limiter on my comments. It's been a year or two now, I'm not sure what it's accomplishing for you these days.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#75

Post by Jensson »

joshuacc wrote: post #60
fergie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s it was a recognised problem that too much of the available childrens literature centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school. Its ironic therefore that when an impoverished Scottish single mother, JK Rowling, wrote the most successful childrens books of all time in the ´90s, that they centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school.

Have you ever read the books? The main characters are middle class or poor.

Harry Potter had more money than he could spend, that is an important part of the story.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#76

Post by fergie »

throwaway638637 wrote: post #51
fergie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s it was a recognised problem that too much of the available childrens literature centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school. Its ironic therefore that when an impoverished Scottish single mother, JK Rowling, wrote the most successful childrens books of all time in the ´90s, that they centred on wealthy kids who went to boarding school.

Hardly wealthy, I would say. The Weasleys lack of money and second hand clothes were an important subtheme..

They are "boarding school poor" (ie not poor). The dad is high up in a ministry, where they have all gone to school with each other. The brother is on a tenure track at a major university. They are very well connected. They live in a massive house in the country, etc, etc.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#77

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

bombcar wrote: post #46
amiga386 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privilege You live in a city the Nazis are going to bomb. Your family and your home is almost certainly going to be blasted to smithereens. The government has evacuated you - unaccompanied - to some strangers, and it doesn't care who these strangers are, so long as they volunteer to put you up. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-evacuated-children-of-the... That is not privilege. Privilege is being able to sit behi…

They also got the privilege of all dying together in a bombing raid on the train.

I think that was a post-war railway accident, actually, not a bomb.

Re: Why Children's Books?

#78

Post by guy234 »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #7

Rarely does an article swing paraphrase by paragraph between interesting analysis and the opposite as much as this. Edit: guilty of my own snark, here is an excerpt from the conclusion that I appreciate: > There’s no doubt that reading for pleasure as a child can change your life. It is a key predictor of economic success later in life. But the main reason to help children seek out books is this: if you cut a person…

> Rarely does an article swing paraphrase by paragraph between interesting analysis and the opposite as much as this.

what

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